"But Doug that's--" He smiled. Dot was suddenly silent with the knowledge that whether she liked it or not, she could no longer refuse to accept the facts as they were, could no longer cross off their implications for want of bolder imagination. "Are we--is it the ... the future?" "Maybe. You could even ask 'is this Earth?' and I couldn't tell you. I wonder what they think where _they_ are ... I wonder if _they_ know." "Doug, would they--do anything? To Terry and Mike, I mean?" "I sure hope not--and I don't think so. The boys will be all right--they know their way around back home--whomever it is we've replaced is in the same boat we are. They'd think more than twice before rashly committing themselves to trouble. They're probably trying to communicate with the kids--if the kids stuck around that long. I'm wondering more about the Contraption. If they start fooling with it...." "Then we'd go back?" "Maybe. Maybe not. I think though that they'd leave it alone, on the theory that whoever invented it knows its use, knows how to handle it safely. They'd be wrong, but I think that's how they'd figure it. I don't think any one'll dare touch it, simply out of sheer fear of what might happen next." "I'm scared, Doug. Awful scared." "I guess that makes two of us. Somehow we've got to dig up the parts for another Contraption. And then--" He let the sentence drift into silence. "And then, Doug?" "Well maybe with the exact same set-up--same everything, I could do it again. I don't know. But if they so much as try to turn the other one off, try to change anything, we'll lose this point of reference in space-time for good." * * * * * Slowly, Dot nodded understanding. "The parts," she said then. "Can we find the things you need?" "I'll give it the old college try, sweetheart." "How long--" He shrugged. "A few days maybe. Depends." They were silent for a moment, looking through the wide window, watching the beautiful vehicles as they slid silently past, re-examining what they could see of the colorful world beyond the rolling lawn. Doug felt an aching in his jaws, a tightness through his lips. God, it was so silly--standing there, trying to explain, when he didn't even know what had happened, where they were or--or when they were. He'd been after travelling light to bring back pictures of the past--every home should have one. Nuts. The future--no, it wasn't supposed to be that way. Unless you accepted past, present and future as the components of one great unit, and progression from one to the other nothing more than illusion, like the illusion of movement given by the hundreds of still frames on a film-strip. If time was like such a film-strip, and you found a way to jump forward along it, bypassing the frames that were in immediate succession--